


To Have and to Hold

by MarianneGreenleaf



Series: Building a History Together: Marriage and Children [6]
Category: The Music Man (1962), The Music Man - All Media Types, The Music Man - Willson
Genre: Charming Victorian, Dance of Romance, Defrosting Ice Queen, Edwardian era, F/M, Fluff with depth, Heavy Petting, Holiday squee, Insatiable Newlyweds, Ladykiller In Love, Literary Banter, Pillow Talk, Seductress!Marian, Sexual Experimentation, Trading Innuendos, Unpacking emotional baggage, gorgeous gowns, gymnasium gatherings, heartwarming domesticity, love bite, smexytimes, sweet & low
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:01:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28370565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarianneGreenleaf/pseuds/MarianneGreenleaf
Summary: Harold's "private tutoring" starts to bear fruit when Marian becomes a little bolder in the bedroom after they attend a Twelfth Night ball.
Relationships: Harold Hill/Marian Paroo
Series: Building a History Together: Marriage and Children [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/26565
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	To Have and to Hold

_The first time Marian and Harold shared a dance in public after their honeymoon, the librarian noticed a subtle but profound difference in the way she danced, now that she was no longer a maid. Something about the movement of her hips seemed freer and less restrained, though she was as graceful and refined in her motions as was drilled into her during her childhood dance lessons. Still, she reveled in this new rhythm her body had discovered, and from the mesmerized look in Harold’s eyes as his body moved in elegant syncopation with hers, he certainly appreciated it, too.  
~Dancing Drabbles, Marianne Greenleaf_

XXX

_January 1913_

After an entire month of marriage, Harold Hill still couldn’t believe his luck in landing the gorgeous and indomitable Marian Paroo as his wife. Not only was their friendship and mutual regard even stronger than it had been during courtship, their passion also continued to deepen as they learned more about each other between the sheets. When he reflected how frightened he’d once been of matrimony, the music professor had to laugh and shake his head at his own ignorance – if he’d known that he was going to be _this_ satisfied, he would have tied the knot with Marian a whole lot sooner!

While there was still a great deal more to discover about the librarian’s natural prowess and proclivities in the bedroom, Harold was exceedingly proud of the wonderful progress they’d made since their wedding night. He’d explored every inch of her with his hands, made love to her with his mouth, introduced her to the concept of riding astride him, and was starting to teach her all the ways he liked to be stroked and fondled and teased below the belt. He approached this marital tutelage with every bit of the zeal and dedication he sold the River City-ziens his Think System, and his diligence in this arena bore tremendous fruit: while Marian was still very much the blushing rose in public, she was becoming exactly the kind of enchanting seductress behind closed doors that he’d always suspected, hoped, and imagined that she was capable of being.

To Harold’s elation, he wasn’t always the teacher. Despite her inexperience, Marian still managed to even the playing field between them with her sweet and earnest determination to love him to the very depth and breadth of his soul. And in the course of doing just that, there were times she knocked him delightfully off balance.

The Twelfth Night Ball was just such an occasion. Harold’s undoing began when he saw his delectable wife all dolled up in the most elegant ensemble he’d seen her in since the Fireman’s Ball: a rich burgundy evening gown of sumptuous velvet with an airy tulle overlay. She looked like a gift for his unwrapping, and the fact that her dress was smartly trimmed with gold ribbon only heightened this alluring impression. Before they left the house, he’d indulged in running his hands longingly over the librarian’s sleek curves as she put the finishing touches on her elaborate chignon, and she not only allowed but downright encouraged his explorations. While he stopped short of marking her neck or mussing her ensemble beyond repair, she did have to repin a few sections of her hair once the sonorous chiming of the grandfather clock in the hall startled them out of their romantic reverie – and reminded them that they’d better be running along before they were unforgivably late!

As Harold escorted Marian to the armory, he sorely regretted that they had to leave their bedroom at all tonight. Not for the first time, he wished he hadn’t passed up the opportunity to whisk his wife away from River City for a proper honeymoon tour of at least a month’s duration. While he cherished each and every yesterday they’d piled up together in their cozy and charming home, he’d underestimated the interminable amount of social calls and obligations that River City would press-gang them into once they deemed the music professor and librarian had honeymooned long enough.

Thankfully, being in love hadn’t dimmed his silver tongue a single iota, and Harold relished using his powers of persuasion in service to his and Marian’s happiness. And so he was the reason River City was throwing a ball on Epiphany Eve instead of Christmas Eve, because he wanted to enjoy a romantic Christmas alone with his new wife – especially after a December that was jam-packed with town events they were required to help plan, host, or attend!

Even more thankfully, neither the music professor nor the librarian had much in the way of responsibility at this particular soirée. All Harold and Marian were expected to do was set the example for the other couples with their fancy footwork, which they did with gusto. It was the first time husband and wife had danced together in public since their wedding day, and they were in top form, moving together with a synchronized grace that made Mayor Shinn puff out his chest with vicarious pride, Tommy Djilas and all the other teens stare at them in wide-eyed wonder, and Mrs. Shinn and her ladies regard them with dewy-eyed smiles.

As the evening gradually – almost painstakingly – inched closer to the midnight hour, the tempo of the music eased from breathless, fast-paced reels into slow, sultry waltzes. But as Harold held his wife, his heart continued to pound just as crazily as it had when they danced the Shipoopi. He’d seen the way Marian’s hips moved all night, not scandalously, but with the subtle, suggestive, and scintillating rhythm of the fully knowledgeable woman. What’s more, when they waltzed together, she no longer glanced shyly at him the way she did as a maid – she now openly gazed at him with the longing of a lover. If he hadn’t been such an expert dancer, those ardent looks would have driven him completely to distraction. And she clearly knew this, given the sly, sideways smiles she was aiming at him whenever they weren’t looking directly at each other.

Since the lights were romantically – and to his mind, conspiratorially – low, Harold boldly brought Marian’s hand to his mouth and kissed it. “I’ve been counting down the minutes until we can go home, my dear little librarian.”

“So have I,” she whispered.

The vehement desire in her voice undid him so much that he seriously contemplated taking her home _right now_. As it was, he was having a hard time resisting the temptation to whisk her into a dim corner and press against her far more closely than propriety allowed him to do on the dance floor. Still, through sheer strength of will, the music professor and librarian persevered until the end of the event, and even managed to bid their many friends and acquaintances a decorous goodnight before sedately exiting the armory. But as soon as they rounded the corner of Center Street and the building disappeared from view, Harold tightened his grasp on Marian’s hand and pulled her toward East Pine at a brisk pace that was just shy of full-fledged running.

XXX

Normally, husband and wife liked to engage in a bit of front-hall flirtation as part of their preamble, but once the door was closed, they immediately headed right up to the bedroom. It wasn’t often they said so little to each other before the amorous chase between them ended, but tonight was one of those rare and sublime occasions where the chemistry between them rendered words absolutely futile in expressing the intensity of their longing for each other. And so their prelude was heated looks and deep kisses and hands moving avidly over each other’s bodies. Just as Harold had been aching to do all evening, he liberated Marian from that elegant burgundy gown as if tearing open a long-awaited Christmas gift, and she divested him of his suit-coat and dress shirt with a similar zeal. He also relished unpinning her blonde curls from their fancy coiffure and watching them tumble freely down her shoulders and back, while she ran her fingers through his slicked-back tresses until they were equally disheveled.

While Marian was not yet so bold to unbuckle his belt or unfasten his trousers, she feverishly caressed his hands as he gallantly did this part for her – and when he took his hands away, curious to see what she might do without his express guidance, her hand remained unabashedly on his cock. Though she didn’t go beneath his drawers, he felt her touch as acutely as if it was on his naked skin. He groaned long and loud as she stroked the length of him, coyly at first, but then with growing confidence at his audible encouragement. The next several moments were a blissfully incoherent blur as he lost himself in her exquisite ministrations – until he realized with a start that he was actually coming.

Harold hadn’t experienced a climax from this kind of over-the-drawers teasing since he was a teenager. As he shuddered and went slack, Marian blushed nearly as red as the gown she was no longer wearing and withdrew her hand. “I didn’t mean to go _that_ far – we’ve only just started!”

He immediately put a stop to her self-recrimination by taking her hand in his – the sweet hand that had pleasured him so adeptly – and pressing an ardent kiss to it. “Marian, that was _magnificent_.”

The way her eyes lit up with pure exhilaration was thoroughly enchanting. “Really?”

He pulled her into his arms and bestowed another heated kiss, this time to her delectable crimson lips. “I’ve wanted you so badly all night that I needed the edge taken off me. Now I can concentrate on seeing how many times I can make _you_ come before I, er, stand at attention again.”

Hastily shedding the remainder of his clothes, Harold embraced his beautiful wife skin to skin. This was one of his favorite parts of making love to her, feeling her silky smoothness against him everywhere their bodies touched. By the time they tumbled down to the bed together, Harold was starting to get hard again, and though he was eager to make love to Marian in earnest, he fondled and kissed and suckled her breasts as his fingers moved in and out of her slick, velvety wetness. Just before he brought her to the brink of climax, he withdrew his hand and buried his head in her lap so he could taste her as she came, and as she was completely undone beneath his clever tongue, he grew unbearably hard.

“Marian,” he gasped, coming up for air and desperately locking eyes with her. He’d meant to draw their prelude out longer, bringing her to ecstasy at least once or even twice more with his mouth, but he couldn’t wait – he needed to be inside her _right now_.

To his relief and delight, Marian moaned his name just as desperately in return. When she pulled him into her arms, he slid right into her, and their hips writhed together so fiercely that Harold once again found himself in danger of climaxing much sooner than he anticipated. But he couldn’t slow this frantic rhythm between them, nor did he want to – for the first time in their marriage, he _wasn’t_ setting the pace of their lovemaking, and it was thoroughly intoxicating. Although he was the one on top, Marian’s hands firmly grasped his rear and pressed him even more deeply into her with every single thrust he made, even as her hips rose eagerly to meet his. She was feasting on him in a way she had never dared to do before – this was the hottest he’d ever had her between the sheets, and the fact that he loved her body, heart, and soul made her audacity ten times more satisfying. This was exactly the kind of unabashed lovemaking he’d always wanted with her, and that it had only taken a month of marriage for them to reach this point was nothing short of miraculous. So he let nature and instinct take over completely, reveling in the sensation of her tight wetness around his cock, the avid press of her hands to an area of his anatomy that she still blushed to look at when he caught her staring, and the way she keened and moaned and screamed as if she was in continuous ecstasy while they moved together. When Harold finally did come, he remained inside his wife, trembling from the intensity of orgasm and the savory aftereffects of Marian pressing sweetly ardent kisses to the crook of his neck where it met his shoulder.

Usually, the music professor was the one to break their post-coital silence, but in keeping with her newfound boldness, the librarian beat him to the punch. “I wish we could stay together like this all night,” she sighed. “I’m not ready to let you go.”

Indeed, she was still so wet that he slipped out of her as they lay together, and there would be a bothersome but necessary interval before he was hard enough to reclaim entrance. To compensate for his absence and to keep the flames of her pleasure fanned, he caressed her breasts with his hands and then his mouth. Although he was spent at the moment, he never lost his desire to make Marian melt beneath his clever ministrations. “I’m still planning to make love to you all night long, my dear little librarian,” he assured her in between kisses. “When I’m not able to do it in earnest, I’ll pleasure you any other way I can think of in the meantime... ”

“Mmm,” she agreed happily, especially as his hands wandered further south.

By the time Harold was ready to make love again, Marian was so keen to have him that she didn’t issue so much as a token protest when he rolled onto his back and brought her to straddle him. He could count on one hand the times they’d done it this way, and if ever there was a fortuitous occasion to increase their tally, tonight certainly seemed to be it. Marian _did_ blush as she mounted him, which he found utterly charming. But judging from how easily he slid into her, she wanted him this way just as badly as he wanted her.

As they began to move together, her reticence disappeared entirely. Though Harold largely drove the pace as he grasped her hips, she rode him more confidently than she ever had before, arching her back and displaying her breasts so irresistibly that he was compelled to stop at various intervals, take them in his mouth, and suckle until she grew even wetter and pleaded for him to keep _going_. Eventually, she was so overwhelmed by pleasure that she collapsed on top of him and clung to his shoulders as he thrust into her with everything he had. He’d never ventured to be this wild with Marian before, and he was so hot for her that he once again found himself caught up in a frenzied rhythm he didn’t have control over – he could hardly tell where the motion of his hips ended and hers began. So it wasn’t long before he tumbled off the precipice into euphoria right along with her.

XXX

When they were both fully and finally spent, the sun was peeping up over the horizon. As Harold winced in protest against this inexorable proof of night’s end, he hoarsely observed, “It’s a good thing the library and music emporium are closed until Tuesday – I can’t move a muscle!”

Marian let out the low, throaty laugh that always drove him wild – or would have, if he’d had an ounce of energy left in him. “I _did_ get the sense that you were struggling to keep pace at times. But then I realized how silly such an idea was. Your prowess in the bedroom is legendary, whereas I’m a blushing ingénue who still has much to learn.”

It was quite something, how she continued to knock him off balance. This was said coquettishly – even admiringly – rather than mockingly, but it still stung a little to hear, especially after the splendid night they’d just shared together.

After weighing several potential responses, Harold decided to take the most exhilarating risk of all: complete and total honesty. “Marian, this kind of relationship is new to me too, you know,” he said earnestly, turning to face her full-on. “Being a Casanova didn’t prepare me for _everything_. Sometimes, I’m learning right along with you.”

Indeed, the payoff was marvelous: Marian’s eyes widened in amazement and her mouth fell open in the most charming little _o_. Whether she was surprised by his confession or that he hadn’t flirted back to her, Harold wasn’t sure. But it didn’t really matter, because she did exactly what he was hoping she’d do: bare her soul just as fiercely to him in return. “Well,” she said, biting her lip, “I just want to make sure I’m giving you as much pleasure as you give me. I know I can’t be the most skilled lover you’ve ever had, but I _do_ hope I’m one of the most enjoyable.”

He continued to look steadily into her yearning gaze, still falling helplessly into the depths of her eyes just the way he had that heated summer night on her front porch. “Marian, last night was the best I’ve ever had in my life. No woman has ever loved me the way you do. No woman has ever _known_ me the way you do. All the skill in the world can’t compare to the way I feel when I’m with you.”

Her eyes glistened in the endearing way that made him want to kiss her senseless, and she graced him with the beam that never failed to warm him to the core of his soul. “Oh, Harold… ”

“I mean every word of what I said,” he insisted, feeling the odd but insistent need to continue selling past the close. “Cupid’s aim was certainly true when I first laid eyes on you.”

Marian laughed, and he was relieved to hear nothing but unbridled joy in her melodic voice. “Eros isn’t the only god of love, you know. He’s but one deity in Aphrodite’s entire retinue of Erotes, which oversee all manner of love and desire.” Her smile turned mischievous. “There’s even a god for sweet-talk and flattery – his name is Hedylogos.”

Harold grinned wickedly. It really was delightful, discussing anything in the world with her. “Ooh, tell me more about him.”

Marian nestled into the crook of his shoulder and yawned, her breath pleasantly tickling his neck as she exhaled. “Unfortunately, little is known. He’s not mentioned in any literature, but merely depicted on vases.”

“Well then, who’s your favorite Erote?” he asked conversationally as his eyes drifted shut.

“Anteros – the god of love requited and returned,” she murmured, sounding halfway to dreamland, herself.

“Mmm,” Harold agreed. There was definitely an opening to resume their heated interlude somewhere in her remark, and he was resolved to pick up this tantalizing thread after he’d gotten a few hours of revitalizing shut-eye. But for now, it was enough to simply hold his wife and let the rhythmic tempo of her breathing lull him into similar repose.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to see what Marian's elegant burgundy ballgown looks like, you can check it out [here](https://sarita29.livejournal.com/).


End file.
